Badtaste.it was at the Rome Fiction Fest where writer/director David S. Goyer was presenting his new series “Da Vinci’s Demons.” During the Q&A for his new series, the subject turned to writing Man of Steel and how it compares to his other works and Goyer was happy to elaborate.

Moderator: You are quite good at writing two kinds of stories: fantasy completely original stories, with a supernatural aspect, and also adaptations (especially from comic-books) that you reinvent in an original way. We know you’re working on a new comic-book adaptation, a DC Comics adaptation. What does this work have in common with you previous works?

David Goyer: Are we talking about Man of Steel? What Christopher Nolan and I have done with Superman is trying to bring the same naturalistic approach that we used adopted for the Batman trilogy. We always had a naturalistic approach, we want out stories to be rooted in reality, like they could happen in the same world we live in. It’s not that easy with Superman, and actually this doesn’t necessarily mean we will make a dark movie. But working on this reboot we are thinking about what would happen if a story like this one actually happened. How would people react to this? What impact would have the presence of Superman in the real world? What I really like to do is writing “genre” stories without a cartoonish element. I did the same with Da Vinci’s Demons, and I’ll do the same with Man of Steel.

Squaring off against the superhero are two other surviving Kryptonians, the villainous General Zod, played by Michael Shannon, and Faora, Zod’s evil partner, played by Antje Traue. Also from Superman’s native Krypton are Lara Lor-Van, Superman’s mother, played by Ayelet Zurer, and Superman’s father, Jor-El, portrayed by Russell Crowe. Rounding out the cast are Harry Lennix as U.S. military man General Swanwick, as well as Christopher Meloni as Colonel Hardy.